Frequency of hand-to-head, -mouth, -eyes, and -nose contacts for adults and children during eating and non-eating macro-activities
Author
Wilson, Amanda MVerhougstraete, Marc P
Beamer, Paloma I
King, Marco-Felipe
Reynolds, Kelly A
Gerba, Charles P
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Coll Agr & Life Sci, Dept Environm SciUniv Arizona, Mel & Enid Zuckerman Coll Publ Hlth, Dept Commun Environm & Policy
Issue Date
2020-07-15
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUPCitation
Wilson, A.M., Verhougstraete, M.P., Beamer, P.I. et al. Frequency of hand-to-head, -mouth, -eyes, and -nose contacts for adults and children during eating and non-eating macro-activities. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-020-0249-8Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Hand-to-face contacts are important for estimating chemical and microbial exposures. Few studies describe children's hand-to-eye or -nose contacts or adults' hand-to-face contacts. The study objective was to characterize hand-to-head (mouth, eyes, nose, and other) contacts for children in a daycare and adults in multiple locations. Macro-activities and sequences of hand-to-face contacts were recorded for 263 people observed for 30 min each. Statistically significant differences between locations, males and females, adults and children, and during eating and non-eating macro-activities were evaluated. Discrete Markov chains were fit to observed contact sequences and compared among adults and children during eating and non-eating macro-activities. No significant differences in contact frequency were observed between males and females with the exception of hand-to-nose contacts. Children tended to touch the mouth, eyes, and nose more frequently than adults during non-eating macro-activities. Significant differences in contact frequency were observed between locations. Transitional probabilities indicated that children make repetitive mouth, eye, and nose contacts while adults frequently transition to contacts of the head other than the mouth, eyes, or nose. More data are needed to evaluate the effect of age on adults' contact frequencies and to confirm lack of statistically significant differences between adults and children during eating macro-activities.Note
Open access articleISSN
1559-0631PubMed ID
32669669Version
Final published versionae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1038/s41370-020-0249-8
Scopus Count
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Related articles
- A meta-analysis of children's hand-to-mouth frequency data for estimating nondietary ingestion exposure.
- Authors: Xue J, Zartarian V, Moya J, Freeman N, Beamer P, Black K, Tulve N, Shalat S
- Issue date: 2007 Apr
- An observational study of hand-to-face contact via videotaping of Korean older people in daily life settings.
- Authors: Oh HS, Jeong SY, Ryu M, Yang Y
- Issue date: 2022 Jan
- Hand-to-face contact behaviors during indoor activities in daily life among Korean adults: an observational pilot study using videotaping.
- Authors: Oh HS, Ryu M, Yang Y
- Issue date: 2021
- Inadvertent ingestion exposure: hand- and object-to-mouth behavior among workers.
- Authors: Gorman Ng M, Davis A, van Tongeren M, Cowie H, Semple S
- Issue date: 2016 Jan-Feb
- Frequency of mouthing behavior in young children.
- Authors: Tulve NS, Suggs JC, McCurdy T, Cohen Hubal EA, Moya J
- Issue date: 2002 Jul